What Studies of Creatine Have Shown

Types Of Creatine

There are many different types of creatine, but micronized creatine monohydrate is still the best and most popular form of creatine.

Why? Because it is the most value for money, easy to consume and easily absorbed by the body.

The most important point, is that most scientific studies that have shown creatine to work use creatine monohydrate as their test samples – in other words creatine monohydrate has been studied exhaustively.

Micronized basically means smaller, so it will easier for the body to absorb the creatine.

The different types of creatine include:

creatine monohydrate

creatine ethyl ester

creatine anhydrous

creatine citrate

creatine phosphate

creatine malate

creatine tartrate

magnesium creatine

creatine glutamine taurine

creatine HMB

effervescent creatine

creatine titrate

liquid creatine

creatine gum

time released creatine

The different forms: powder, capsules, liquid and blends. Powder is the most popular, and avoid liquid ones.

Possible Side Effects Of Creatine

1. Dehydration

It is important to hydrate yourself well because water follows creatine into our skeletal muscles.

2. Gastrointestinal Distress

This is brought about when you overload too much on creatine leading to an excess of it that is unabsorbed in your body. See below for dosage.

One advantage of micronized creatine monohydrates is that it is easily absorbed into the blood stream and hence, have less tendency to collect within the intestinal compartment.

Other Essential Information Of Creatine

1. Vegetarians can use creatine and I highly recommend that they do. This is because creatine comes mainly from meat and fish and thus, vegetarians tend to have deficient levels of creatine in their bodies. It becomes more of a necessity than a need in such a situation.

2. Creatine does not make you fat.

How To Use Creatine

There are 2 ways.

1. Loading And Maintenance Phase

In the loading phase, you consume 20g of creatine for 5 days, followed by a maintenance phase of 3-5g each day for 2-3 months.

Then, take 1 whole month off creatine consumption as a precaution to overdosage of creatine and to allow our body to rebalance its internal equilibrium.

*DO NOT load for more than 5 days consecutively, as by the 5th day, your muscle stores should already be fully loaded

*DO NOT consume the full load of creatine at once during the loading phase, i.e DO NOT consume all 20g of creatine at one shot, because the body won’t be able to use all creatine immediately and it will be excreted as urine.

Furthermore, this will cause undue stress on your kidneys and liver.

2. Same Amount Of Creatine Daily

For this method, consume 3-10g of creatine daily for 2-3 months, and then take 1 whole month off creatine consumption for similar reasons shared above.

NOTE: It has been shown that a loading phase is not necessary. Conventional wisdom has it that method 1 (loading) will bring about “volumnizing” of your cells faster, but method 2 will bring about less stress on your kidneys and liver and still work similarly well.